He said parents at his local school were among those circulating advice which was against all evidence about the effectiveness of vaccines.

He told a health policy summit: "One thing we are very concerned about at the moment is around vaccination in this country. Across the world two to three million lives are saved each year by vaccination."

Official figures show 913 cases of measles in England between January and October last year - compared with 259 in the whole of the previous year. The number of cases in Europe reached a record high in 2018, three times higher than in 2017.

Mr Stevens said that parents who failed to get their children vaccinated were as irresponsible as if they failed to teach their children to look left and right before crossing the road.

"And so for last year for example we saw triple the number of measles cases that we had seen the year before, despite the fact that vaccination works.

"We have seen a five-year steady decline in vaccination uptake and the consequence of this is that very effective and important health interventions that we have got to continue to win the public argument about."

In the UK, distrust in vaccines can be traced back more than 20 years to the now discredited theories of Andrew Wakefield, whose Lancet paper claimed there was a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism. This led to a huge drop in vaccination rates across the western world which took years to recover.

The chief executive of NHS England told the summit that parents were being given false information.

"We are not being helped on this front by the fact that although nine in ten parents say they support vaccination half of them say that they have seen fake messages around vaccination on social media," he said.

"There has been a discussion even this week where I think Instagram has been under discussion and YouTube so I think frankly for parents - if parents are being told that their children shouldn’t be vaccinated, it’s as irresponsible as is to say don’t bother when your kids are going to primary school to tell them to look both ways before they cross the road.

"We have really got to as a health service to support parents on this.

Mr Stevens read out a message he had received from a parent at his own child’s school.

"Even at my own daughter’s primary school… the WhatsApp messages from the parents say: 'My kids aren’t vulnerable and I think loading on vaccines blocks their systems from fighting disease as it should do,' so we have got a responsibility to really explain that it's not only in the interests of your own children but herd immunity for other children as well."

Mr Stevens warned that uptake of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is now at 87.5 percent against the 95 per cent that the World Health Organisation target, despite "unimpeachable" evidence that it saves lives.

Mr Stevens told The Telegraph: "The downward trend in vaccinations against major diseases like measles, tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria exposes children to preventable illnesses and can in the most tragic circumstances cost lives.

"Lower vaccine uptake also puts at risk other families’ children who are too young yet to have their full inoculations.

"Any mum or dad understandably will be concerned at posts on social media peddled by people who mislead families through fake science and scare stories, but parents can be reassured that not only are vaccines safe, they are one of the miracles of modern medicine and vital to our children’s wellbeing," he said.